Chicory is a beautiful plant with blue flowers, but the interesting part is in the ground: the chicory taproots are a source of inulin, a natural sweetener that is used in bread and dairy products and as dietary fibre for…
Recently, a group of scientists, successfully developed a new high-yielding transgenic desi chickpea variety. For that, they used the chickpea cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase gene expressed under the chickpea WRKY31 gene promoter.
Plant breeders around the globe have worked for decades to create peanut varieties that can fight off fungal diseases, and several have been successful. Now DNA detectives show how important peanut seed exchange is to food security.
New research sheds fresh light on plant chloroplasts, and the proteins inside them. The regulation of chloroplast proteins is important for plant development and stress acclimation and is increasingly significant as plants - including our staple crops, wheat, rice, barley…
Pollinators – such as bees, butterflies and birds – are essential for agricultural production. However, natural pollination can also fail or be insufficient, which can lead to lower yields and poorer quality. This means alternative solutions are needed. Hand pollination,…
New study provides new target for increasing oil content of plant tissues for potential applications in bioenergy, chemical engineering, and nutrition.
Plants regulate their growth and development using hormones, including a group called strigolactones that prevent excessive budding and branching. For the first time, scientists have synthesized strigolactones from microbes.
A new method for quantifying plant evolution reveals that after the onset of early seed plants, complexity halted for 250 million years until the diversification of flowering plants about 100 million years ago.
A water-absorbent coat to keep rust away? It may seem counterintuitive but when it comes to soybean plants and rust disease, researchers from Japan have discovered that applying a coating that makes leaf surfaces water absorbent helps to protect against…
Invasive shrubs in Northeastern forests that sprout leaves earlier in the spring and keep them longer in the fall not only absorb more sunlight than native shrubs, but their foliage lowers air temperatures on the forest floor, likely giving them…